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A Historical Look At The First Linux Kernel

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the to-configure-simply-recompile dept.

LinuxFan writes "KernelTrap has a fascinating article about the first Linux kernel, version 0.01, complete with source code and photos of Linus Torvalds as a young man attending the University of Helsinki. Torvalds originally planned to call the kernel "Freax," and in his first announcement noted, "I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones." He also stressed that the kernel was very much tied to the i386 processor, "simply, I'd say that porting is impossible." Humble beginnings."

3 of 173 comments (clear)

  1. Re:It's Also a Great Story by apathy+maybe · · Score: 1, Troll

    Linux.

    All the meaty goodness you could want, along with links to everything mentioned in the article (including the news groups, and all that other random crap).

    As well, if you do a Search for "linux history" (with or without the "), you get Linux the big picture, Linux History and a much better history then the one in the article, History of Linux (though not the first from the search result).

    Basically, the article is rehashing stuff that is very easily found, presenting it in a format that isn't even very interesting (a short blurb at the beginning and then a copy of all the other stuff..., sounds hard to do!) and leaves out a bunch of relevant information (such as all the GNU stuff that made it usable...)!

    --
    I wank in the shower.
  2. Re:"Humble beginnings" by baldass_newbie · · Score: 0, Troll

    Ob. 'You must be new around here'

    Seriously, half the time the trolls are the entertainment.
    I mean, do you really give a shit about 15+ year old kernels and a goofy looking European?
    Seriously.

    --
    The opposite of progress is congress
  3. Re:Note the mention of GNU by DrXym · · Score: 0, Troll
    Maybe if the GNU folks had only been working on a kernel instead of also doing the hundreds of other programs as well, they would have made more headway with HURD. And if Linus had been trying to do a whole OS and not just the kernel, Linux the kernel would still be early in development.

    This is a poor excuse. Linux went from nothing to a whole operating system in an extremely short space of time. Sure it used GNU tools which makes it all the more curious why GNU Hurd managed to go nowhere. Weren't those same tools available to the Hurd kernel too? One could also ask what's Hurd's excuse SEVENTEEN YEARS AFTER STARTING that it still isn't a viable alternative to Linux?

    The mention of GNU should merely point out how important the GNU is in GNU/Linux. As Linus said in the post: Sadly, a kernel by itself gets you nowhere. To get a working system you need a shell, compilers, a library etc. These are separate parts and may be under a stricter (or even looser) copyright. Most of the tools used with linux are GNU software and are under the GNU copyleft.

    Lots of things are important to Linux, not just GNU tools. The insistence by some that it be called GNU/Linux is absurd. If you took away the parts that are not GNU, not copyright FSF, it would be wallowing in obscurity just like the Hurd.